


To Live Deliberately One Last Time

by Silverlight8



Category: Dead Poets Society (1989)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Gen, Implied Relationships, POV Third Person, Suicide, neil perry dies, pov neil perry, slightly implied todd anderson/neil perry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-06-15 21:04:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15421572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silverlight8/pseuds/Silverlight8
Summary: Neil has one last chance.





	To Live Deliberately One Last Time

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my lovely beta, MidshipmanWarburton. Merci!
> 
> (As mentioned in the tags, this story contains suicide and suicidal thoughts. If this could potentially be harmful, please don't feel pressured to read. I just want everyone to enjoy this story, or if that isn't possible, to be as safe as possible. Merci!)

_I was good,_ Neil says,  _I was really good._

His mother doesn't seem to hear him, just tells him to get some sleep. He follows her out of the room like an automaton.

***

He doesn’t remember climbing the stairs at all, but here he is, inside his bedroom. Everything’s dusty, as if once he was out of the house and locked up in Welton, his parents closed the door and forgot him. But not entirely. Not enough to leave him be.

There’s a strange buzzing in his ears now. He thinks of all the boys back in their beds, safe, asleep. He imagines Todd, his blue eyes closed and dreaming, lying across from Neil’s own empty bed. There’s a lurch in his chest when he thinks of him. God. How alone is he?

He’s almost in a trance, taking his duffle coat off, then his shirt, until he’s standing in the middle of his dark bedroom (the only light is coming through the window) shirtless. There’s nothing, nothing but harsh blankness. He sees the Puck crown in his hand; he must not have put it down when he first came into the room. He doesn’t remember.

He’s numb now, walking towards the window, raising the sash so that a blast of winter air sweeps into the room. No change. He’s still so unbearably _blank_ , even standing by the window, wishing desperately to feel something, anything, something to make him wake up from what must be a terrible dream. Through the blankness he finds himself reaching for crown—maybe something from earlier will return?  

Nothing. He stares out into the night, not noticing the flakes of snow swirling in through the window and sticking to his skin; his mind keeps returning to Todd, asleep in his bed. Neil has no future, nothing to do to make his life worth anything (God, even play-acting other people’s lives?) and he thinks of Todd, and Neil can’t have him either?

He looks down from the window, slowly, slowly. He can’t look out the window anymore.

His mind shifts track now (thinking of Todd is painful, too painful, and somehow it’s worse because he still can’t feel anything _different_ ) and now many times has his father locked him in a cage, bound him, gagged him, shuttled him on this path? He remembers the quote read at the beginning of every meeting of the Dead Poets Society: _I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life; to put to rout all that was not life, and not, when I had come to die, discovered that I had not lived._

An overwhelming, dull terror fills his chest. Living deliberately when there’s nothing to put him off this course? No point. He’ll barely be living at all. Because what else is there to live for when nothing is deliberate?

His eyes are closed.

He’s taking off his crown before he can think. His play is over, he knows it. ( _All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players—_ )

Living deliberately; he’d tried that, hadn’t he, and look where it got him: locked back up in his father’s cage.

Something begins to take shape in his mind now, something he’s only thought of before in the briefest of moments, but now he lingers on it, and before he knows what he’s doing, he’s turned away from the window.

He’s got one last chance.

***

He feels like he’s living inside a dream as he walks down the stairs, slowly, slowly. His mind is set on an inexorable path, and he can’t stop dwelling on it; it feels strange to imagine that these minutes are his last, that he will never see Todd or Charlie or Knox or anyone else again. He is completely alone. And yet the thought doesn’t bother him in the slightest. Without passion, without _poetry_ , he can only imagine being alone (in a worse way than this, like a wraith in the night).

One last chance.

Everything he does seems final. He finally reaches the bottom of the staircase; he brushes the rail with his hand one last time. He knows his father keeps his gun in his study, in the middle drawer in the left of the desk; he can imagine it lying there in the dark, already loaded and wrapped up in a white rag. His father had shown him where it is last year.

He reaches the study door and swings it open, carefully, trying not to make any noise. The curtains in the windows are open, draping moonlight over everything in the room. He nudges the door almost shut behind him and goes toward the desk; the key is gleaming in the weak light, and he runs his finger along the jagged edge before turning it in the lock. Almost tenderly, he reaches for the handle and pulls open the drawer—the gleam of the silver handles in the moonlight almost shocks him.

Remember, one last chance.

***

He has the gun in his hand and he sets it on his father’s desk, right in the middle, before sitting down in the chair. He’s never sat here before, and it feels alien to him. This could have been his life; a study all panelled in dark wood, a sitting room, a dining room, a dutiful wife, a son who he molded in his own form. Or tried to. Neil himself was never meant to be here.

His hands are steady as he unwraps the cloth around the pistol, the metal cold in his hands as he turns it over.

***

The play seems a lifetime ago now— _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ , a dream indeed—and it’s hard to believe that he was laughing only hours ago, seeing his friends in the audience, hearing Mr. Keating’s praise, watching Todd slide away from him through the car window. The only deliberate thing he’d ever done in his life.

Well. Except for now.

He puts the gun to the side of his head.

_One last chance, one last chance, one last chance one last chance one last—_

He fires.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> In the interests of keeping everyone safe, here's a website with worldwide hotlines for suicide prevention and mental health. I can't verify how up-to-date or accurate the information is, but I hope if you need it, it'll be there. 
> 
> https://www.iasp.info/resources/index.phpa


End file.
